Phylogeny and classification of fejervaryan frogs (Anura: Dicroglossidae) - Salamandra

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Phylogeny and classification of fejervaryan frogs (Anura: Dicroglossidae) - Salamandra
SALAMANDRA 54(2)            109–116             Classification
                                         15 May 2018     ISSN of fejervaryan frogs
                                                               0036–3375

                        Phylogeny and classification of fejervaryan frogs
                                   (Anura: Dicroglossidae)

    Eugenia Sanchez1, S. D. Biju2, Mohammed M. Islam3, Mahmudul Hasan4, Annemarie Ohler5,
                             Miguel Vences1 & Atsushi Kurabayashi3,6

          1)
             Zoological Institute, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mendelssohnstr. 4, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
                   2)
                      Systematics Lab, Department of Environmental Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India
                             3)
                                Amphibian Research Center, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan
     4)
        Department of Fisheries Biology & Genetics, Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Science & Technology University,
                                            Melandah, Malancha-2012, Jamalpur, Bangladesh
              5)
                 Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité, ISYEB – UMR 7205 – CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE,
               Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 30, 75005, Paris, France
          6)
             Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North-West University, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa

                          Corresponding author: Miguel Vences, e-mail: m.vences@tu-braunschweig.de

                                               Manuscript received: 18 August 2017
                                             Accepted: 3 January 2018 by Jörn Köhler

      Abstract. Systematics and classification of Asian frogs of the genus Fejervarya and related genera (family Dicroglossi-
      dae; hereafter referred to as fejervaryan frogs) have been the subject of intensive debates in the past few years. We com-
      plement previous phylogenetic studies with analyses of concatenated sequences from 14 nuclear loci and mitochondrial
      gene fragments, totaling 12,752 nucleotides for 46 species representing all major lineages and relevant outgroups. We
      find strong support for two major clades within Fejervarya: a South Asian clade and a Southeast Asian clade. Previously,
      South Asian species have been hypothesized to constitute a separate genus, Zakerana (currently considered a junior syn-
      onym of Fejer­varya), and also include species previously described as members of the genus Minervarya. Although par-
      simony and species tree analyses found support for the monophyly of Fejervarya as currently understood, partitioned
      Bayesian inference and unpartitioned Maximum Likelihood analyses of concatenated sequences recovered Southeast
      Asian species as a clade sister to the genus Sphaerotheca, albeit with low nodal support. We discuss the advantages and
      disadvantages of alternative classification schemes in light of previously proposed criteria for naming supraspecific taxa.
      The current single-genus taxonomy would impart desirable economy of nomenclatural change, and morphological dia­
      gnosability. However, other taxon naming criteria such as support for monophyly, temporal framework for diversifica-
      tion, and biogeographic regionalism would support a contrasting two-genus alternative. Because new species of Fejer­
      varya are increasingly being discovered and described, and because a single-genus classification (Fejervarya) will remain
      controversial, given ambiguous support for its inferred monophyly, we propose recognizing two genera: Southeast Asian
      Fejervarya, and South Asian Minervarya. This classification results in two genera whose monophyly is strongly support-
      ed, respectively, and unlikely to be challenged by future analyses. Accordingly, we transfer all species of the South Asian
      clade to the genus Minervarya.
      Key words. Amphibia, Fejervarya, Minervarya, Sphaerotheca, Zakerana, systematics, Taxon Naming Criteria.

                         Introduction                                Frost 2017). Fejervaryan frogs, members of the family
                                                                     Dicro­glossidae Anderson, 1871, are the closest relatives to
The Asian frogs variably assigned to the genera Fejervarya           the genus Sphaero­theca Günther, 1859. How exactly the
Bolkay, 1915, Minervarya Dubois, Ohler & Biju, 2001,                 different clades of fejervaryan frogs are related to each oth-
and Zakerana Howlader, 2011, popularly referred to as                er, and to Sphaero­theca, is however disputed. Phenotypi-
Rice Frogs (e.g., Sumida et al. 2007), Cricket Frogs (e.g.,          cally, most taxa are inconspicuous, and many are difficult
Suwannapoom et al. 2016), or fejervaryan frogs, repre-               to distinguish by morphology, yet are genetically and etho-
sent a major unsolved phylogenetic and taxonomic co-                 logically diverse, as is evident from a recently marked in-
nundrum. Currently, Minervarya and Zakerana are con-                 crease of new species descriptions (e.g., Kuramoto et al.
sidered junior synonyms of Fejervarya (Dinesh et al. 2015,           2007, Howlader et al. 2016, Garg & Biju 2017). Molecu-
© 2018 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde e.V. (DGHT), Mannheim, Germany
Available at http://www.salamandra-journal.com                                                                                      109
Phylogeny and classification of fejervaryan frogs (Anura: Dicroglossidae) - Salamandra
Eugenia Sanchez et al.

lar phylogenetic analyses have included a variable number         MA, USA). Newly generated sequences were submitted to
of species, and recovered either the genera Fejervarya and        GenBank (accession numbers MG719866-MG719921; Ta-
Sphaerotheca as sister groups (Pyron & Wiens 2011, Di-            ble SM2). Institutional abbreviations used herein are RBRL
nesh et al. 2015), or recovered Sphaerotheca nested within        (Rondano Biodiversity Research Laboratory, St. Aloysius
Fejervarya (Frost et al. 2006, Kotaki et al. 2008, 2010,          College, Mangalore, India) and ZSI (Zoological Survey of
Hasan et al. 2014).                                               India); for additional institutional abbreviations, see Table
   In general, previous studies all found support for two         SM2. Sequences were aligned using ClustalW (Thomp-
monophyletic groups within Fejervarya (Dinesh et al.              son et al. 1994) as implemented in MEGA 5.2 (Tamura
2015), one consisting of a clade primarily limited to South       et al. 2011). Alignments of mitochondrial gene fragments
Asia, and another largely occurring in East and Southeast         (12S and 16S) were processed with Gblocks 0.91b (Castre-
Asia (e.g., Kurabayashi et al. 2005, Kotaki et al. 2008,          sana 2000) to remove ambiguously aligned sections, with
Dinesh et al. 2015). Of these, the Southeast Asian clade,         50% threshold and default settings. Flanking positions of
which includes the type species of Fejervarya (Rana limno­        the selected blocks are provided in Table SM3. Best-fitting
charis Gravenhorst, 1829), has most often been found              models of molecular evolution and partition schemes were
as sister to Sphaerotheca (Frost et al. 2006, Kotaki et al.       inferred by the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) using
2008, 2010, Hasan et al. 2014). In contrast, the South Asian      PartitionFinder 2 (Lanfear et al. 2016) and are provided
clade has been hypothesized to constitute a distinct genus        in Table SM4. Bayesian inference (BI) phylogenetic analy-
Zakerana, based on peripheral molecular and morpholog-            ses of the concatenated DNA sequences were performed
ical comparisons (Howlader 2011) which however were               with MrBayes 3.2 (Ronquist et al. 2012). Our analysis was
based on incomplete taxon sampling. Further complicat-            run for 20 million generations, with four Markov Chains
ing fejervaryan taxonomy, an additional genus has been            (three heated and one cold), and trees were sampled eve-
previously proposed to accommodate a group of small-              ry 1,000 generations. We confirmed stabilization and con-
bodied South Asian species (Minervarya Dubois, Ohler              vergence of likelihood values using Tracer 1.4 (Rambaut
& Biju 2001), which have later been found nested within           & Drummond 2007). After discarding 25% of sampled
the larger South Asian clade (Kuramoto et al. 2007, Di-           trees as burn-in, a majority-rule consensus tree was used
nesh et al. 2015).                                                to summarize relationships, with posterior probabilities of
   In this work, we reconsider the systematics of fejervar-       nodes used to assess support. Several sequences from mul-
yan frogs with the dual goals of (1) reconstructing phylo­        tiple species of Limnonectes were combined chimerically
geny with an expanded dataset consisting of both nuclear          and designated as a distant outgroup; and sequences of Eu­
and mitochondrial DNA sequences, and (2) evaluating im-           phlyctis, Nannophrys and Hoplobatrachus were included as
plications of alternative generic taxonomy, following ex-         hierarchical outgroups. We also reconstructed topologies
plicit taxon naming criteria (Vences et al. 2013).                under the Maximum Parsimony (MP) optimality criteri-
                                                                  on in PAUP* v4.10 (Swofford 2002) using the tree-bisec-
                                                                  tion-reconnection (TBR) branch-swapping algorithm and
                          Methods                                 100 random addition sequence replicates, and conducted
                                                                  bootstrap analyses of 2,000 pseudoreplicates with 10 ran-
Sequences of species from the genera Fejervarya, Sphaero­         dom addition sequence replicates each. Furthermore, we
theca, Euphlyctis, Nannophrys, Hoplobatrachus and Limno­          estimated phylogeny under Maximum Likelihood (ML),
nectes (family Dicroglossidae) were retrieved from Gen-           implementing a GTR+G substitution model. From the ML
Bank for the nuclear and mitochondrial gene fragments:            analysis we obtained a best tree and a majority consensus
12S ribosomal RNA (12S), 16S ribosomal RNA (16S), chem-           rule tree of 1,000 full bootstrap replicates in RAxML V
okine (C-X-C motif) receptor 4 (cxcr4), cytochrome b              7.2.7 (Stamatakis 2006). We also inferred a species tree
(cob), sodium/calcium exchanger 1 (ncx1), recombination           using *BEAST v. 1.8.4 (Drummond et al. 2012), defining all
activating gene 1 (rag-1; included as two different frag-         nuclear genes as separate unlinked partitions, and merg-
ments named rag-1-3’ and rag-1-5’), recombination activat-        ing all mitochondrial genes into a further partition, with
ing gene 2 (rag-2), rhodopsin exon 1 (rho), tyrosinase (tyr),     a Yule prior and a relaxed clock model, and implementing
and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (bdnf). For some            GTR+G substitution models for each partition. The analy-
taxa, we further complemented the dataset for these genes         sis was run for 500 million generations, and a consensus
with new sequences generated via standard polymerase              tree was generated after discarding 50% of sampled trees
chain reactions (PCR; Table SM1). Additionally, we used           as burn-in using TreeAnnotator v. 1.8.4 (Drummond et al.
the same DNA extractions as Kotaki et al. (2010) to se-           2012).
quence fragments of leucine-rich repeat / WD repeat-con-              To explore individual gene histories, we estimated sepa-
taining protein (kiaa1239), sacsin (sacs), and titin (ttn) with   rate gene trees with BI and ML for each locus. A final BI
primers and nested PCR as in Shen et al. (2012), and pro­         analysis was performed on a smaller matrix of the concate-
opiomelanocortin (pomc) using standard PCR. Primers               nated dataset, in which all nucleotide positions with miss-
and PCR conditions are provided in Table SM1. Chromato-           ing data were excluded, and at least two representative spe-
grams were visually checked and edited using CodonCode            cies from each main clades were included (resulting in the
Aligner v3.0.3 (CodonCode Corporation, Centerville,               exclusion of the gene pomc from this analysis).

110
Classification of fejervaryan frogs

                            Results                                   nucleotides). Of all 12,752 sites, 2,860 were variable and
                                                                      1,699 were parsimony-informative.
Our preferred phylogenetic inference is based on DNA                     Bayesian Inference analysis of the concatenated dataset
sequences from 14 genes, four of which were newly se-                 produced a largely resolved tree in which fejervaryan frogs
quenced in this study (kiaa1239, pomc, sacs and ttn; Ta-              (and, thus, the genus Fejervarya sensu lato; Frost 2017)
ble SM2). Our final matrix contained 46 terminals, and                are paraphyletic with respect to the genus Sphaerotheca
14.5% of the sequences were newly obtained for this study.            (Fig. 1). The two primary clades are recovered with strong
After alignment and exclusion of hypervariable sites with             support (posterior probabilities PP=1.0). The South Asian
Gblocks, the matrix consisted of 12,752 nucleotide sites for          clade contains species previously assigned to Miner­varya,
each terminal (having 52.5% missing data; i.e., total 278,631         whereas the Southeast Asian clade was recovered sister

Figure 1. Maximum Likelihood tree of fejervaryan frogs based on a concatenated dataset of 12,752 bp of 14 mitochondrial and nuclear
loci. The tree shown is the best tree recovered by ML analysis. Numbers at nodes are support values from separate analyses: BI posterior
probabilities (asterisks denote 1.0), followed by MP and ML bootstrap percentages (asterisks denote 100%). Dashes denote instances
in which a particular node was not recovered in the respective analyses. Variably-shaded boxes enclose species assigned to the three
genera recognized here. Red underlined species names indicate type species of Fejervarya (F), Minervarya (M) and Zakerana (Z).
For Nannophrys spp. and Limnonectes spp., included sequences are chimeric, corresponding to combined data from multiple species
in these monophyletic genera.

                                                                                                                                   111
Eugenia Sanchez et al.

Table 1. Summary of phylogenetic relationships inferred in individual single-gene trees. Table entries include BI posterior probabili-
ties for various relationships recovered in single-gene tree analyses. SAC = South Asian clade; SEAC = Southeast Asian clade; Sph. =
Sphaerotheca. Hyphens denote poorly supported clades.

          Clade      SAC + SEAC + Sph. SAC + SEAC SAC monophyly SEAC monophyly SAC + Sph. SEAC + Sph.
          12S                 –                   –               –                 0.96               –           –
          16S                 –                   –
Classification of fejervaryan frogs

shown to be the superior solution, which higher-level ge-        received strong heuristic support and both were support-
nus names should be applied to the monophyletic entities         ed in nearly all single-gene analyses. If these three clades
discovered here?                                                 (when also considering Sphaerotheca) each are consid-
                                                                 ered distinct genera, we would consider it unlikely that the
                                                                 monophyly of individual genera could be challenged in the
         How many genera of fejervaryan frogs?                   near future.
                                                                    Three further secondary TNCs should also be consid-
Clearly, reaching a consensus on the generic classification      ered at this point, which would be most consistent with a
of Fejervarya could generate disagreement and debate, re-        two-genus classification scheme: first, the Time Banding
quiring a justified resolution of what could become a com-       (time calibration comparisons) TNC follows suggestions
plex taxonomic issue; we acknowledge that any solution           of Avise & Mitchell (2007), in which clades of similar
will necessarily remain subjective. In the following, we         evolutionary age might best be recognized at equivalent
contribute to this discussion by evaluating the alternatives     taxonomic “ranks”. Our phylogeny generally demonstrates
following the Taxon Naming Criteria (TNCs) of Vences             similar genetic scales of divergences among the branches
et al. (2013). Of the originally conceived TNCs, three have      separating the three clades; although we did not attempt an
been highlighted as particularly important (Vences et al.        explicit dating analysis, this crude generalization suggests
2013): monophyly, robustness of clades to varying analysis       at least a generally comparable scale of temporal diversi-
methods and datasets (“clade stability”), and phenotypic         fication among the main clades. Thus, we favor an inter-
diagnosability.                                                  pretation resulting in the assignment of all three clades to
   According to the data presented here, monophyly of            equivalent rank, namely separate genera. Second, the Bio­
fejervaryan frogs (South Asian taxa + Southeast Asian            geography TNC favors classifications that maximize the
taxa), to the exclusion of Sphaerotheca, can neither be as-      biogeographic information. This criterion logically is con-
certained by concatenated multigene BI and ML analyses,          sistent with a two-genus arrangement, which would facili-
single-gene trees, nor by separate concatenated analyses         tate discussion and analysis of distribution patterns of the
of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences. However,             primary respective clades. One of these contains a major-
the conceivable monophyly of a clade in which these two          ity of South Asian (Indian subcontinent) taxa, but also a
subclades are sister groups also cannot be refuted. In fact,     species from the Andaman Islands (F. cf. andamanensis),
some previous studies have supported such a monophylet-          and some taxa from Thailand (e.g., an undescribed taxon
ic arrangement (Pyron & Wiens 2011) with strong nod-             previously named F. sp. hp3; Kotaki et al. 2010). In con-
al support, as did the MP analysis of our extensive data-        trast, the Southeast Asian clade contains species primarily
set (Fig. SM18) and the species tree analysis (Fig. SM20).       from Southeast Asia, but also extends to Bangladesh (F. cf.
The Monophyly TNC, therefore, does not necessarily result
in a need to change the existing classification—because in
terms of a general economy of taxonomic change, unstable,
back-and-forth changes in classification should be avoided
(Vences et al. 2013). However, recent phylo­genomic stud-
ies have shown that some controversial nodes of the Tree
of Life are recalcitrant to unambiguous resolution even
when millions of nucleotide positions are analyzed (e.g.,
Rodríguez et al. 2017). It is conceivable that the node that
joins the two main clades of fejervaryan frogs, even if real,
may never be unambiguously resolved and strongly sup-
ported in the foreseeable future.
   The Phenotypic Diagnosability TNC also argues for the
recognition of a single, more inclusive genus to accommo-
date all fejervaryan frogs. The species are morphologically
very similar, and identification of a phenotypic distinction
between South Asian versus Southeast Asian species has
not been forthcoming (Ohler et al. 2014). One recogniz-
able diagnostic character, a putative synapomorphy, shared
by all fejervaryan species is their conspicuous ventrolateral
lines (Fig. 2), whereas these structures are absent in other
amphibians including Sphaerotheca (Dubois et al. 2001,
Garg & Biju 2017).
   On the contrary, classification of fejervaryan frogs into
two genera, corresponding to South Asian and Southeast           Figure 2. Ventral view of Fejervarya limnocharis from Bogor, Java,
Asian regional clades, would be favored by the Clade Sta-        Indonesia, showing the presence of “fejervaryan lines,” shared by
bility TNC of Vences et al. (2013). Each of the two clades       members of Fejervarya and Minervarya (absent in Sphaerotheca).

                                                                                                                              113
Eugenia Sanchez et al.

moodiei) and India (F. orissaensis). Finally, third, although    in a subset of our individual gene trees, we likewise failed
based on isolated evidence only, the Hybrid Viability TNC        to identify unambiguous heuristic (bootstrap, posteri-
may also support classifying our primary clades as sepa-         or probabilities) support for such a relationship from all
rate genera, as crossing experiments have revealed com-          analyses. The respective nodes are, for the time being, best
plete hybrid incompatibility between some species (Sumi­         viewed as characterizing an unresolved polytomy. Identifi-
da et al. 2007, Islam et al. 2008). For example, Southeast       cation of an unambiguous morphological synapomorphy
Asian Fejer­varya sp. “Large” produced viable hybrids when       (the derived presence of fejervaryan lines) which, appar-
crossed with the equally Southeast Asian F. iskandari,           ently, is unique to fejervaryan taxa, serves to aid in the rec-
whereas hybrids resulting from crosses with a represent-         ognition and definition of the clade containing the South
ative of the South Asian clade, Fejervarya sp. “Medium”,         Asian + Southeast Asian taxa, as it is absent in Sphaerothe­
were not viable, i.e. complete hybrid inviability at embry-      ca, but might not reliably guide inference of relationships
onic stage (Islam et al. 2008).                                  given the overall high amount of homoplasy observed in
                                                                 ranoid anuran morphology. After carefully evaluating rel-
                                                                 evant TNCs of Vences et al. (2013), we conclude that dis-
 Morphological variation and the phylogenetic position           tinguishing between a single-genus versus two-genera so-
                    of Minervarya                                lution for generic boundaries in fejervaryan frogs is ham-
                                                                 pered by ambiguous alternatives, guided solely by subjec-
Many species of fejervaryan frogs are morphologically            tive assessment of the merits of TCNs and taxonomic dis-
similar; we suspect that many more morphologically cryp-         tribution of character states and, thus, requires a somewhat
tic (but genetically distinct) new species will be discovered    arbitrary resolution.
and described in the future. However, despite this prevail-          Given past disagreements concerning the taxonom-
ing pattern, our phylogeny clarifies ranges of phenotypic        ic arrangement of Fejervarya, we prefer an arrangement
variation in the clades defined here, and aids in the identi-    that treats South Asian and Southeast Asian taxa each as
fication of morphologically distinct subgroups.                  a separate genus. This is because, despite the clear ambigu-
    For instance, the phylogenetic position of Minervarya        ity and anticipated remaining controversy (see comments
(as defined by Ohler et al. 2014), at first glance, is at odds   by Frost 2017), we feel that a biogeographically sensible,
with the definition of Fejervarya sensu lato. Its placement      regionally circumscribed arrangement has a higher prob-
within the South Asian clade is confirmed by our multi-          ability of stabilizing the taxonomy of these frogs. We note
gene analyses (Fig. 1 and Fig. SM17–20) and by several sin-      that such a more atomized classification will not likely be
gle-gene trees (Table 1). In particular, molecular data are      challenged in future phylogenetic studies focusing on the
available for M. sahyadris, the type species of Minervarya,      question of monophyly versus paraphyly of fejervaryan
from Aralam, India (voucher RBRL 050714-01; Hasan et             taxa. We espouse this primary, geographically logical ar-
al. 2014), as well as for a specimen from the type series of     gument, based on the premise that recognition of two re-
M. gomantaki (voucher ZSI/WGRC/V/A/867 = CESF 2294;              gionally defined and biogeographically delimited clades/
Dinesh et al. 2015), a phenotypically typical Minervarya         genera of fejer­varyan frogs, will result in stability and di-
species (Ohler et al. 2014). These small frogs are nest-         minished controversy—and we feel that this scheme is in
ed within the South Asian clade but are morphologically          better agreement with the Time Banding, Biogeography,
distinct from other dicroglossid frogs by their (1) small-       and Hybrid Viability TNCs (Vences et al. 2013).
er body, (2) white horizontal stripe on the upper lip, and           The Southeast Asian species sampled here include Rana
(3) presence of a rictal gland (Dubois et al. 2001, Ohler        limnocharis Gravenhorst, 1829 (the type species of Fejer­
et al. 2014). Substantial morphological variation in the         varya), which is the first-described genus-group name in
South Asian clade also is conspicuously evident in five spe-     the group (Frost, 2017). The second clade (primarily South
cies of the Fejervarya rufescens subclade (F. cepfi, F. kadar,   Asian taxa) contains the type species of both Minervarya
F. manoharani, F. neilcoxi, and F. rufescens; Garg & Biju        and Zakerana (Minervarya sahyadris Dubois, Ohler, and
2017). These species notably resemble members of the ge-         Biju, 2001; and Rana limnocharis syhadrensis Annandale,
nus Sphaerotheca, but differ by the presence of the fejer-       1919), of which Minervarya was described earlier and, thus,
varyan lines and other morphological characters such as          has nomenclatural priority.
the presence of an outer metatarsal tubercle and smooth              Of the 45 described species of Fejervarya (Frost 2017),
ventral body skin (Garg & Biju 2017).                            31 were included in our phylogenetic analysis and can de-
                                                                 finitively be assigned to either of the two proposed gen-
                                                                 era based on independent empirical results (genetic data,
      Proposal for a classification of fejervaryan frogs         and species’ positions in our phylogeny). For some species,
                        in two genera                            morphological similarity-based arguments were presented
                                                                 by Ohler et al. (2009), allowing us to assert putative over-
In this study, we compiled a large molecular phylogenet-         all phenotypic assignments for selected taxa not sampled
ic dataset, yet were unable to provide unambiguous sup-          in our genetic dataset. We propose the following amend-
port for the monophyly of fejervaryan frogs. And although        ed taxonomy, allocating all species of Fejervarya sensu lato
Fejer­varya was paraphyletic with respect to Sphaerotheca        Frost (2017) to either Fejervarya or Minervarya; we none-

114
Classification of fejervaryan frogs

theless are aware that in some cases, confirmation will be        bariensis (Stoliczka, 1870), M. nilagirica (Jerdon, 1854),
required to confidently place unsampled taxa in one of the        M. parambikulamana (Rao, 1937), M. pierrei (Dubois,
two genera.                                                       1975), M. rufescens (Jerdon, 1853), M. sahyadris Dubois,
   Individual problematic species’ assignments may be             Ohler, and Biju, 2001, M. sauriceps (Rao, 1937), M. sen­
challenging. It is also worth emphasizing that the identity       gupti (Purkayastha and Matsui, 2012), M. syhadren­
of some of the historically described species (e.g., M. brevi­    sis (Annandale, 1919), and M. teraiensis (Dubois, 1984).
palmata) will require additional scrutiny, due to apparently      Species are assigned to the genus based on accompanying
lost type specimens and doubtful type locality (Frost 2017).      genetic data, except for the following species who are as-
The identity and validity of numerous other taxa likewise         signed based on their geographical occurrence in South
require confirmation; for instance, M. asmati (Howlad-            Asia and/or morphological similarity to other Miner­varya,
er, 2011) may be a junior synonym of M. pierrei (Dubois,          and whose assignment is in need of confirmation: M. brevi­
1975), judging from genetic similarity inferred here (Fig. 1).    palmata, M.chilapata, M. modesta, M. murthii, M. mysoren­
                                                                  sis, M. nepalensis, M. nicobariensis, M. nilagirica, M. param­
Fejervarya Bolkay, 1915                                           bikulamana, M. sauriceps, M. sengupti, M. teraiensis.

Type species: Rana limnocharis Gravenhorst, 1829 by subse-
quent designation of Dubois (1981).                                                      Acknowledgements
Content: F. cancrivora (Gravenhorst, 1829), F. iskandari          We thank Meike Kondermann for her assistance with labora-
Veith, Kosuch, Ohler, and Dubois, 2001, F. kawamu­                tory work, Rafe M. Brown for his thorough review of an earlier
rai Djong, Matsui, Kuramoto, Nishioka, and Sumida,                manuscript version, and an anonymous reviewer for comments.
2011, F. limnocharis (Gravenhorst, 1829), F. moodiei (Tay-
lor, 1920), F. multistriata (Hallowell, 1861), F. orissaen­
sis (Dutta, 1997), F. pulla (Stoliczka, 1870), F. sakishi­                                    References
mensis Matsui, Toda, and Ota, 2008, F. schlueteri (Wern-
er, 1893), F. triora Stuart, Chuaynkern, Chan-ard, and            Avise J. C. & D. Mitchell (2007): Time to standardize taxono-
                                                                    mies. – Systematic Biology, 56: 130–133.
Inger, 2006, F. verruculosa (Roux, 1911) and F. vittigera
(Wiegmann, 1834). All these species are assigned on the           Bolkay, S. J. (1915): Beiträge zur Osteologie einiger exotischer Ra-
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2001 by original designation.                                       (2015): Systematic status of Fejervarya (Amphibia, Anura,
Junior synonym: Zakerana Howlader, 2011                             Dicro­glossidae) from South and SE Asia with the description
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dale, 1919 by original designation.                                 – Zootaxa, 3999: 79–94.
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